«The rain before it falls»: determinism according to Jonathan Coe

Les bouquins du mardi - The retrospective - Lauriane Pipoz

An old aunt mysteriously dead in a gloomy mansion, tapes piled up... Rain before it falls begins shrouded in mystery. The enigmatic title of this novel caught my eye over ten years ago. While the suspense is not lacking, another profound theme is far more important: determinism. Deciphering a profound and moving story.

Read more in our October issue (pre-order here), Lauriane Pipoz's interview with Jonathan Coe.

Old Aunt Rosamund has died. Gill is deeply affected. She sets off with her two daughters to deal with the reclusive woman's final affairs. It's then that she comes face to face with tapes recorded for a mysterious girl, Imogen. Unable to locate her, she listens to the tapes with her daughters and discovers the secrets of an entire family line.

Walk blindfolded

Imogen is blind. Using only her voice, Aunt Rosamund tries to show her a series of photographs designed to reveal her origins. We receive the same information, but in written form. Even though the photograph could be shown to us, we have access to something far more precious: the main character's vision of these images. Each shot described corresponds to a family anecdote. Each shot reveals a piece of Rosamund and Imogen's family history.

We soon realize that her disability is associated with her lineage. Jonathan Coe uses this approach to show us the situation of several generations of women in deepest England. All marked by the history of their predecessors. But feminism isn't the subject of this book: it's about the wounds of childhood. Each of these women has had to endure her own mother's disaffection. Each will pass this on to her daughter, who will find her own ways to fill the emotional void... until the same medium is used by one of them, generations later, with a most dramatic outcome.

This quasi-philosophical tale links the bites of childhood with the mistakes of adulthood. It may seem simplistic, or too generous, to explain the latter by the former, seeming to excuse them. For the faults committed are enormous. But this is Rosamund's vision and, through her, that of the British author. Moreover, the ending can be interpreted in different ways by the reader.

But perhaps this is the only criticism I would level at this delicate tale: if the word «determinism» doesn't appear, the novel could have been even more subtle without the black-and-white questioning of one of the protagonists. Perhaps it's my obsession with this theme that makes me think it would have been even more pleasing if the idea of determinism had sprung into the reader's mind of its own accord. But that's just how I see it.

Write to the author: lauriane.pipoz@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © Flickr/OliBac

Jonathan Coe
Rain before it falls
Editions Gallimard
2011
268 pages

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